Wondering What Hormone Causes This Weird Feeling?

[Luke768]

Hi, I got this feeling yesterday that I don't remember getting when I was younger, although it's similar to how I felt when I smoked cannabis for the first time, and also when I was coming down off an LSD trip which was scary. I've smoked cannabis maybe 25 times in my life (all last year) and got this feeling most times. It's like time kind of slows down, I forget how to use social cues and I feel a kind of a panic/terror. Is it just a panic attack? I got it in public yesterday when there was a lot of attention on me and I didn't feel comfortable.
It doesn't happen often, I'm just wondering if anyone knows why it sometimes happens?
thanks
Luke

 

[Diokine]

Modulation of serotonin and GABA systems leading to increased neural projection to the amygdala.

seriously though it's a pretty complicated subject. It sufficient to say that the drugs can make your brain goofy. These goofy circuits are still in the brain and can be triggered by about a million different things.

EDIT: Brains can be goofy also without drugs.

 

[Luke768]

haha, I hope I haven't goofed my brain up...

 

[Diokine]

Don't worry, brains are incredibly resilient.

 

[tara]

Assuming it is not the effects of drugs, you could try some simple technique to increase CO2 levels and see if it helps. There are lots of ways - Peat sometimes bag-breathing - until it gets uncomfortable - a minute or two, which can be done several times a day.

There could be any number of things going on, but this is a relatively easy one to test.

EDIT: Brains can be goofy also without drugs.

Yeah. :)

 

[barefooter]

It's really hard to say, it could be lots of things. I would tend to get a very similar feeling most times I smoked pot. I don't mess around with it anymore, because it just doesn't work for me most times, and the few times it is fun aren't worth the risk. I'd typically get kinda an uncomfortable spacey feeling, like I couldn't quite keep track of where I was, and sometimes a terrible fear that I wouldn't be able to talk in social situations. This would often spiral into a very panicked stated. I'd never had a panic attack when I was experimenting with weed, but now that I have without it, I think it may have been triggering near panic attacks for me. I know there was a study posted recently that I'm pretty sure showed THC raises cortisol, so maybe it's high cortisol.

About a year ago in a very stressful situation, I too started getting this super panicked feeling, similar to being high, when I was sober, which really freaked me out thinking I'd ****88 up my brain. But I'm pretty sure it was just stress hormones, they can make you feel like you're loosing it in high enough quantities. I've been reading a bit about the DHEA/cortisol ration, and at least in my case I think low DHEA is also to blame, so that's something you could look into. I've been supplementing with DHEA the past week, and I've noticed a reduction in spacey/panicked states, and an overall improvement in mental wellbeing.

 

[Luke768]

thanks guys, I'll try the bag breathing more. I feel I'm a bit young to use DHEA? But I'll look into reducing cortisol :).

 

[msw93]

I smoked a bit of weed in high school.... and by a bit, I mean probably about 8 times. the 8th time, I got the feeling you're describing. Tell me if this sounds familiar: you feel depersonalized. You feel fake. You are scared shitless and your mind is racing. You feel like you were coming out of your body? Yeah, well... I thought this was a side effect of smoking weed.

Fast forward to this previous summer. I smoked weed to see if maybe I just had a bad "trip". It happened again. I freaked the f*** out. I could not leave my apartment. My friends thought I was being extremely weird. I figured I could just never smoke weed again and be okay.

2 months later, completely sober while working in the library for an assignment, I was hit again with this terror. It wasn't weed induced at all. After more research and visits to the doctor, counselor, and pscyhiatrist, I was experiencing panic attacks.